Breakdown of Ik weet dat u het karton heeft weggebracht.
ik
I
u
you (formal)
hebben
to have
weten
to know (a fact)
dat
that (conjunction)
het karton
the cardboard
wegbrengen
to take away
Questions & Answers about Ik weet dat u het karton heeft weggebracht.
How is the past participle weggebracht formed?
It comes from the separable verb wegbrengen (to take away). To make the past participle, the -ge- is injected right between the prefix (weg) and the past participle of the base verb (bracht). Because brengen is irregular, its participle is gebracht, giving us weggebracht.
Why are the verbs heeft weggebracht piled up at the end of the sentence?
The word dat (that) introduces a subordinate clause. In Dutch, a subordinate clause pushes all its verbs to the very end of the sentence. The main clause (Ik weet) keeps standard word order.
Can I change the order to weggebracht heeft at the end of the sentence?
Yes, you can! When you have an auxiliary verb (heeft) and a past participle (weggebracht) at the end of a subordinate clause, you can put them in either order. Both heeft weggebracht and weggebracht heeft are perfectly correct.
I learned that 'you have' is jij hebt. Why does this sentence use heeft with the pronoun u?
The pronoun here is u, which is the formal 'you'. For u, you can use either hebt or heeft. U heeft sounds slightly more formal and is very common in Dutch.
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